We. Yevgeny Zamyatin

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СКАЧАТЬ hall, hundreds of little round schoolboys’ heads, and Plyapa, our maths teacher. We’d nicknamed him Plyapa: he was pretty worn-down and wobbly, so when the technician put the jack in him, the loudspeaker always started with a loud ‘Plyaplya-tshhhhh’, and then our lesson began. One day, Plyapa told us about irrational numbers. I remember I wept, banged my fists on the table, and wailed, ‘I don’t want √−1! Get √−1 out of me!’ This irrational root burrowed into me like something alien, foreign, frightening, gnawing at me from within – it couldn’t be rationalised or neutralised, it was beyond ratio.

      And now, this was √−1 all over again. I’ve looked over everything I have written and it is clear: I’ve tricked myself, lied to myself – done everything in my power to not see the √−1 on the wall. It doesn’t matter if I am sick or anything else: I still could have gone. A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice and just done it. Why is it that now . . . why? It happened again today. At exactly 16:10, I was standing in front of the gleaming glass wall. Above me, the letters on the Bureau’s sign shone like the sun, golden and pure. Through the glass, I could see a long line of bluish unifs inside, their faces glowing like candles in an ancient church: they had come to perform a great deed, to sacrifice people they loved, their friends, and themselves on the altar of the One State. And I – I was dying to be among them, to be one of them. But I could not bring myself to do it: my feet were glued to the glass of the pavement – I stood there, dumbly staring, unable to move . . .

      ‘Hey mathematician, wake up!’

      I winced. Before me: black eyes, lacquered in laughter, and thick African lips. The poet R-13, my old friend, and rosy O with him, as well.

      I angrily turned around (if they hadn’t distracted me, I would have finally, forcibly extricated √−1 from my being and gone into the Bureau).

      ‘I’m not asleep, and, for your information, I was just admiring,’ I said rather sharply.

      ‘Oh yes, of course! You, my friend, should have become a poet instead of a mathematician! It’s not too late! Come over to our side! I could set you up in a snap.’

      R-13 talks like he’s drowning in words, they spray out of him, splattering out of those thick lips – every ‘p’, a fountain, ‘poet’, a fountain.

      ‘I serve and will continue to serve true knowledge,’ I said, furrowing my brow. I don’t like or understand jokes, and R-13 has this stupid habit of joking.

      ‘What good is knowledge? That knowledge of yours is nothing but cowardice. Don’t even try to deny it. All you want to do is put a wall up around infinity, but then, you’d be too scared to even look over the wall. I’m onto you! You’d take one peek and immediately screw your little eyes shut. Don’t try to deny it!’

      ‘Walls are the foundation of everything human—’ I began.

      R sputtered out a whole fountain and O laughed, as well, roundly and rosily. I waved them off: I don’t care, laugh all you like. I had other things on my mind. I needed to somehow swallow and muffle that damned √−1.

      ‘You know what?’ I offered. ‘Why don’t we all go to my place and do some maths problems?’ (I recalled yesterday’s quiet hour – maybe there could be another one like it today.)

      O glanced at R, and then back at me, round and clear, her cheeks turning the gentle, exciting colour of our tickets.

      ‘Well, today I . . . today, I have a ticket to see him,’ she gestured at R, ‘and in the evening, he’s busy . . . so . . .’

      R’s wet, lacquered lips smacked amiably, ‘That’s alright: she and I only need half an hour. Right, O? I’m not big on solving your little problems, anyway – why don’t we just go over to my place and hang around there?’

      The thought of being alone with myself, or rather, that new, alien self who, by some strange coincidence, happened to have my same number, D-503, was terrible. So we all went to his place, to R’s. Although he isn’t exact, or rhythmical, and his sense of logic is laughable and distorted, we are good friends. No wonder three years ago he and I chose this same darling, pink O. She now connects us even more strongly than our years together in school.

      R’s room. You’d think that everything was exactly the same as in mine: the Table of Hours, the glass of the chairs and the desk, the closet, the bed. However, as soon as we got there, he pushed aside one chair, the other, the surfaces shifted, everything phased out of regulation dimensions, and turned non-Euclidean. R was the same as he ever was. He was always behind in Taylor and maths.

      We remembered the days of old Plyapa: how we boys would sometimes plaster his glass legs with thank-you notes (we loved our Plyapa). And then our Law Teacher.⁴ The Law Teacher was incredibly loud-speaking – like he had a strong gale blowing out of his cone – we kids would yell after him from the top of our lungs. One day, that daredevil R-13 stuffed a bunch of chewed-up paper into his mouthpiece so that when he spoke, spitballs flew out of him. R was punished, of course, and what he had done was terrible, but now, we were laughing about it – our little triangle – including myself, I confess.

      ‘What if he’d been alive like the Ancients’ teachers? That would have been,’ and the ‘b’ breached like a fountain out of his thick, smacking lips . . .

      The sun came in through the ceiling and walls; sun from above, from the sides, and reflected up from below. O sat on R-13’s lap and tiny droplets of sun sparkled in her blue eyes. I warmed up, came to; the √−1 fell silent, not stirring . . .

      ‘So how’s that INTEGRAL of yours? Are we flying off to visit the aliens any time soon? Hurry, hurry! Or else we poets will write so much, your INTEGRAL won’t be able to take off! Every day from eight to eleven . . .’ R turned his head and scratched it. The back of his head reminded me of a little rectangular suitcase perched on his neck. (It reminded me of that ancient painting, ‘In the Carriage’.)

      I came alive.

      ‘So you’re writing things for the INTEGRAL, too? What are you writing about? Even just today.’

      ‘Today, nothing. I was busy with other things,’ he said, spraying his ‘b’ right at me.

      ‘What other things?’

      R furrowed his brow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know! Well, if you really need to, it was a death sentence. I was poeticising the verdict. This idiot, one of us poets . . . Sat next to me for two years and seemed totally normal. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he goes and declares, “I am a genius! – A genius! – Above the law!” And the things that he wrote . . . if you could have seen them . . . It’s just too bad!’

      His thick lips hung low, the lacquer drained out of his eyes. R-13 hopped up, turned away, and stared off somewhere through the wall. I looked at his tightly shut little suitcase and wondered: what is he going over in there, in that suitcase of his?

      A minute of awkward, asymmetrical silence. I didn’t know what was wrong, but there was something.

      ‘Luckily, the antediluvian era of all those Shakespeares and Dostoevskys and whoever else is far behind us,’ I said intentionally loudly.

      R turned back to face me. His words were still spraying and spilling out of him, but, it seemed to me, the lacquer of cheer in his eyes had vanished.

      ‘Yes, my dear mathematician, we’re so very lucky! We are the luckiest arithmetical СКАЧАТЬ